What Kind of Grass Do I Have? Grass Types in Minnesota & Wisconsin

What kind of grass do I have?

Start with the easy part. If you live in Minnesota or Wisconsin, you have cool-season turfgrass. Cool-season grasses do their growing in the cool, moist conditions of spring and fall, slow down or go semi-dormant in summer heat, survive our winters, and come back in spring. Warm-season grasses like bermuda and zoysia do not survive here.

Next question: was your lawn sodded? If so, you almost certainly have Kentucky bluegrass. It is the sod industry's standard because it knits together into a tight mat that can be cut and rolled, and it is the most widely planted cool-season turfgrass in the Upper Midwest.

Bluegrass is popular for good reason: deep green color, soft texture, and it mows cleanly. It is also the most expensive seed and the most demanding to maintain. It wants full sun, it needs more water than fescue, and it is slow to establish from seed. Its redeeming trait is that it spreads by rhizomes, which means it can repair itself and fill in thin areas on its own, something the other two cannot do.

Grass types in Minnesota and Wisconsin

Beyond bluegrass, there are really only two other common possibilities.

Fine fescue

The name describes it. Fine fescues have very fine textured, almost needle-like blades, in a soft gray-green color. The group includes creeping red fescue, chewings fescue, and hard fescue.

If grass is thriving in a shaded part of your yard, it is probably fine fescue. Unlike bluegrass, it does well in shade, including fairly heavy shade, and it tolerates dry, root-filled soil under trees. It also needs less fertilizer and less water than bluegrass. The tradeoff is that it does not handle heavy foot traffic or heat as well, and it does not spread to repair itself.

Perennial ryegrass

It seems odd to call grass shiny, but ryegrass does have a distinct gloss to the underside of the blade. It is dark green and soft, and after mowing it often shows a whitish tint, because the leaf is fibrous and tends to shred rather than cut cleanly, especially with a dull blade.

Ryegrass germinates fast, which is its main value. It is also the least winter-hardy of the three in our climate, so it is usually a component of a mix rather than a lawn on its own.

Chances are, you have a mix

If your lawn was seeded rather than sodded, you very likely have a blend, most commonly bluegrass, fine fescue, and ryegrass together.

The advantage of a mix

That is good news. Each species has strengths and weaknesses, and a blend gives you some of each. Fescue carries the shaded areas. Bluegrass thrives in sun and repairs itself through the summer. Ryegrass handles foot traffic and establishes quickly.

A mix is also more resistant to disease. Most turf diseases are species-specific to some degree, so a monoculture that gets hit loses everything in that area, while a blend loses one component and the others close in. This is a real advantage in a region where snow mold, dollar spot, and red thread all show up in different years.

Why does my lawn look like a quilt?

Here is the common history. The lawn started as bluegrass. Over a few years some thin and bare areas appeared. A trip to the hardware store produced a cheap bag of seed, which contained several species chosen for price rather than fit, and possibly some weed seed as well. Now the lawn is a patchwork of textures and colors that mow at different rates and green up at different times.

The lesson is to be genuinely picky about seed. Read the label: the species and varieties listed, the germination percentage, and the weed seed percentage. Cheap seed is cheap because of what is in it.

Our seed blends are matched to the lawn. A shady yard gets a blend weighted heavily toward fine fescue, with perhaps 10 percent bluegrass or none at all. A sunny yard gets more bluegrass. Ryegrass is not our first choice as a lawn grass, but it earns its place in specific situations: an erosion-prone hillside or a yard with dogs hard on the turf, where fast coverage matters most. Ryegrass germinates in about seven days. Bluegrass takes closer to a month.

The kind that needs attention

The useful conclusion is that the fundamentals are the same regardless of what is out there.

• Mow tall. Three to four inches. Taller grass grows thicker and roots deeper. Mow short and the soil surface heats up, which is exactly what weed seeds need to germinate.
• Water properly. Deep and infrequent, early in the morning, about an inch a week including rain. A lawn that is consistently too wet or too dry invites both weeds and disease.
• Use quality granular fertilizer. Granular costs more than the liquid products that dominate the retail market, but it breaks down slowly and feeds consistently instead of producing a flush of green that fades.
• Leave weed control to someone with professional-grade products. Retail products are weaker and less selective, and the difficult weeds here need the right active ingredient at the right time of year.
• Aerate annually. Core aeration relieves compaction and keeps air and water reaching the root zone.
• Test your soil pH. If pH is off, the grass cannot absorb nutrients efficiently no matter how much fertilizer you apply. This is the test most homeowners skip and the one that explains the most.

A complete lawn care program is how those get done on schedule, with seed and nutrition matched to the grasses you actually have.